Spring sunshine....

March 13, 2024

Spring is surely springing...so say the flocks of northern geese who are going over today in flock after flock. They are so high up, their wavering chevrons are like faint pencil lines in the blue sky, their calls so faint that it takes a bit of looking to spot them. 

The temperature hovered around the freezing point last night, after rising to 15C (59F) yesterday afternoon. There are still lumps of snow around where snow banks were, and on north-facing and shady spots in the bush. The ground is still frozen and hard, but look!!

The first tulip nubs are showing up in the Triangle bed!

On the agenda this morning was re-mounting the Tree Swallow nest box. 

Hubby lagged the board with the nest box onto the cedar post in the corner of the Triangle bed so it overlooks the pond, just a bit further toward the barn than the clothesline post it was on last summer.

We sunk that new cedar post well down into the earth the first summer here, when I dug out the few choked and scraggly perennials that were there around an old, rotting post. It should easily support having the board lagged to it. The triangle bed delineates where the road goes curving around in front of the barn. Last summer, we had hurriedly put a Tree Swallow nest box onto the far clothesline pole when they arrived, then realized what a bad idea that was when I couldn't use the clothesline for fear of disturbing them until the swallows fledged. Once they did fledge, all the little bodies lined up on the clothesline, teetering back and forth to keep their balance.

Other critters had obviously been using some of the Bluebird boxes, a squirrel had packed in shredded bark,

and probably mice had packed in leaves and dry grasses.

On a wander around the clearing in this morning's beautiful warm sunshine, the perennial beds are looking unkempt and my fingers itched to get at clearing them out, but....not until we get into consistently warm temperatures and all the bugs and pollinators who are overwintering in those hollow stems have exited.

One other bird thing was to tie a clump of wool roving encased in a net bag to the branch of a tree for the birds to access for nesting material. We are planning to mount a trail camera aimed at this in the near future.

The pond is still firmly iced in, and we are hoping for more moisture, as it's surface is about two feet short of where it was last spring.